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Toward the end of my time in Italy (1955) I travelled from Rome and its sad reminders of an empire that flourished 2000 years ago, to Naples where — in an amphitheatre under the stars, sitting on a stone tier that supported the derrieres of Neapolitans before Rome was even born — I saw La Tosca, and after sat in a tiny pizzeria at two a.m. and had the greatest pizza I have ever had in my life.
The next day I went farther south to Amalfi which lies more or less on the south coast of the Sorrento peninsula. (Just over the hill is Ravello, where my daughter, yet unborn, would be married, 45 years later). Marvellous climate, lovely villas, home to millionaires, who are the only ones who can afford to live there.
Thoughts of money reminded me of my dilemma at that point: I had come to Italy on a one-way ticket, intending, in my juvenile mind, to stay forever. My remaining travellers’ cheques told me I was wrong. As a foreigner I was prevented from working, and I didn’t have enough money left to allow me to return to Canada. I eventually managed to get to London, England, arriving with enough funds to let me eat for two weeks. At the eleventh hour, after hocking everything but my Jockey shorts, I got a job. And that, very definitely, is another story.
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* Photo: Oliver-Bonjoch
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